Slaved Coarsening in Ferronematics

Abstract

We focus on understanding the influence of the two-component coupling in ferronematics, a colloidal suspension of magnetic nanoparticles in nematic liquid crystals. Using coarse-grained Landau-de Gennes free energies, we study the ordering dynamics of this complex fluid and present a range of analytical and numerical results. Our main observations are: (i) slaved coarsening for quench temperatures $T$ intermediate to the critical temperatures of the uncoupled components, (ii) slower growth similar to the Lifshitz-Slyozov law ($L \sim t^{1/3}$) for symmetric magneto-nematic coupling, (iii) sub-domain morphologies dominated by interfacial defects for asymmetric coupling strengths. These novel results will serve to guide future experiments on this technologically important system.